106 years young

TUSCALOOSA | Want to live until you're almost 107 years old? Cora Gentry has, and she has some advice for anyone else wanting to.

"Live a clean life," she says, speaking in a loud voice to compensate for her poor hearing. "Love God. Go to church. No drinking. No smoking."

Cora, known among friends as "Mama Gentry," turns 107 on April 14. She was born in 1897.

While she's getting up there in years, she doesn't hold the state record. According to the Alabama Center for Health Statistics' most recent data, a woman who was 115 years old died in Alabama in 2002, and a man died that year who was 112.

Cora was born in Bibb County and lived for a period of time in Montgomery, and has lived in Tuscaloosa for the last 40 years. She said the world is a changed place from when she was young.

"America has progressed so much," she said. "Different, everything's different. When I went to school the teacher taught all the grades. They didn't have automobiles."

Cora grew up in the country and said she worked in the fields, picking cotton and corn. She milked cows, walked to school and rode around in her parents' wagon, pulled by mules and horses. Her social life centered on church.

"We'd go on Sunday and have a big thing," she said. "It was great. We had a good life out in the country."

Cora married twice, but she said her first husband, Lloyd Gentry, was the love of her life. Again and again she talked of how she married the "greatest boy."

Her daughter Charlotte Wyatt, with whom she lives, said Cora talks about him all the time.

Lloyd died tragically at the age of 23 when a tree fell on him while he was working as a logger. They were married only 10 months at the time and Cora was pregnant with their only child, Roselle Coker.

Tragedy struck again in 2000, when Cora was riding to the Big Sandy Methodist Church with her daughter.

"We don't know what happened," Wyatt said. "We don't know if my mother had a heart attack. Nothing was wrong with her but she had stopped over there at the road to go to the Methodist Church and somehow her foot got on the accelerator and they went out into the road and a truck hit them."

Coker was killed instantly, but Cora, in the back seat, was not badly injured.

"It bummed her up but didn't break any bones or anything," Wyatt said.

Cora is anxious to see her husband and daughter again.

"It's been a good life but I know it's close to the end because of my age," she said.

And Cora's not afraid of dying.

"God's up there," she said. "He's preparing a space for me. My daughter and my husband and my sisters are in heaven. They're standing right inside the Eastern gate. Some day I'll see them.